On Thursday, a National Weather Service team will survey damage in Northeast Illinois after tornadoes struck the region Wednesday evening.
As reported by the Associated Press, damage from the storms include roofs being torn off buildings and trees being downed. Meanwhile, hundreds of flights at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport were disrupted Wednesday evening.
Ty Carr, a resident of the Skyline Motel in McCook, Illinois, told reporters that a tornado ripped the roof off of the motel, ABC News reports.
“Just chaos,” Carr said. “It was really fast, and the noises and the crackling and the wind – it was just something I’ve never seen or been through, you know?”
Rajan Patel, whose family owns the motel, lamented that the storm heavily damaged the building.
“The entire place is ruined,” Patel said. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know how to recover anything. I don’t know,” he added, noting that his family first came to Chicago in the 1990s with nothing in their hands.
One tornado tore through Countryside, Illinois, a suburb southwest of Chicago, leaving behind damaged homes in its path.
“When the winds kicked up really hard, really fast, and I’m like, ‘Basement – now! Grab the dog, let’s go!’ And it wasn’t more than a couple seconds after that, that got really crazy,” Hillary Timpe, who lives in the neighborhood with her husband, Greg, said.
“It really left as quick as it came,” Greg added. “It was maybe 10, 20 seconds, and it was out of here, and all this.”
The storm also moved through Michigan before entering Canada Thursday morning.
No injuries have been reported at this time.
According to the National Weather Service, the Chicago metropolitan area has seen many tornadoes over the years, and several have struck within the city limits of Chicago.
Between 1855 and 2021, roughly 97 tornadoes have struck the Chicago metro area, NPR reports.
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/koto feja
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for Christian Headlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
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